Insights

Perspectives, methods, case studies, and interviews about information architecture and structured content design for the modern web.

Delivering Information Architecture

A creative photograph of a cityscape focused within the lens of a camera held by a hand, with the blurry background of the sunset sky and city buildings outside the lens.

One of the greatest challenges in digital design is identifying and maintaining focus on the right problem. For information architecture, one of our most common deliverables, the visual sitemap, can actually make focusing on the right problems harder, if not impossible. In this article we’ll examine why this happens, explore what practitioners and teams can do to avoid this trap of misplaced focus, and learn how to rehabilitate our wayward sitemaps and reinstate them as the effective design artifacts they can be.

Stop Publishing Pages! – Content Strategy MeetUp Talk Highlights

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The way that we consume information on the web is changing. Voice and IA technology are driving this change in a way that affects anyone publishing online. And yet: we continue to hold on to the metaphor of the content we publish as “pages,” destined to be found and read as delivered by patient, attentive online readers. I recently had the opportunity to talk with the Seattle Content Strategy MeetUp group about this alarming state of affairs—and about what we can do to fix it.

What Is Information Architecture?

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Information Architecture is the process and the product of designing shared information environments. In the same way that building architects collaborate in the creation of physical environments for shared human use, information architects collaborate in the creation of information environments for shared human use. The architect may not know in detail how each wall or widget gets built, but they know enough about how all the pieces fit together as a whole to ensure that the final result effectively meets the human needs.

Conversations with Robots: Voice, Smart Agents & the Case for Structured Content

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Voice user interfaces, smart software agents, and AI-powered search are changing the way users—and computers—interact with content. Whether or not you’re building services for these emerging technologies, structured content is now necessary to ensure the accuracy and integrity of your content across the evolving digital landscape.

Structured Content Design Workflow

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Over the last several years I’ve become an ardent advocate of “structured content design.” This is the process of designing digital resources (like websites and apps) from the content out, as opposed to creating interaction and visual design first, then shoehorning the content into it right before (or right after) launch. A structured content approach to digital work has a number of advantages over typical “interface first” processes.